My Employee Has Specialized Knowledge and a Great Rapport. But We Might Have to Fire Him Anyway Because of Something Simple He Can’t Do.

Good Job is Slate’s advice column on work. Have a workplace problem big or small? Send it to Laura Helmuth and Doree Shafrir here. (It’s anonymous!)

Dear Good Job,

I’m the office co-manager with “Lisa” at a small specialty medical practice. We hired “Josh” about two years ago for a mix of office and patient-facing work. On one hand, he is very knowledgeable and personable. Patients love him, and often mention him in reviews and to the doctors. He came to us with specialized insurance skills and institutional knowledge about how to deal with them. He has an incredible success rate with sticky insurance and billing issues.

But has zero sense of time. He’s as much as five minutes late for his shifts, forcing others to cover. He frequently stays after his shift ends if he’s in the middle of a task, which gets us into payroll issues. We schedule three minutes per appointment for his patient-facing tasks and he sometimes spends as much as six minutes per patient, skewing the whole schedule. Lisa says he dawdles in the bathroom, although I personally haven’t noticed this. We think he knows he’s hard to replace and is taking advantage of it. A performance improvement plan last year got him to be less tardy to arrive, but he still spends too much time with patients.

Lisa desperately wants to replace Josh with someone more timely. But before we hired him, this role was open for three years. It was covered by a patchwork of other roles trying and failing at weird insurance stuff. Our previous attempts to hire someone for those tasks failed because everyone hates them and they also require on-the-job experience. Conversations with neighboring practices reveals this role is still hard to hire for. Lisa says he’s enough of a problem that we’d be better off firing him even if we can’t replace him, while I think we’re stuck with him. How can we deal with this?

—Between a Rock and a Hard Place

Dear Between a Rock and a Hard Place,

I empathize with your situation, because it’s so frustrating to have an employee whose time management skills are shaky at best. And I also understand why you feel like you can’t fire him. Clearly, though, this isn’t working, and I think you need to reassess how you’re thinking about this role altogether.

I noted a couple of things in your letter. One is that it took you three years (THREE YEARS!) to hire for this job. The other is that you note that “everyone hates” the tasks of the job and they also require on-the-job experience. Then when you finally did find someone, it seems like they are only able to really fulfill half of the job requirements.

I would like to gently suggest that your office needs to recalibrate its expectations for this job. Since it seems like there is literally NO ONE who can do this job as it is currently described, perhaps it’s worth thinking about splitting it into two jobs—either with Josh or without him. It’s kind of like that old saying about how something can only be two out of three—fast, good, and cheap. You don’t get all three; you have to make trade-offs somewhere. I think that’s where we are with Josh and this role. There’s not one person who will do this whole job, with its very disparate tasks, for the salary you’re offering (because it took you three years to hire someone).
In terms of the time management issue, I suspect that at least some of it is stemming from this being a job for more than one person. You need to either increase the salary or split the job.

Dear Good Job,

How do I talk about my opinions on AI without sounding like a Luddite? I value creativity, not poisoning the environment, and a voice that sounds like a person.

But among my current co-workers, I’m in the minority for refusing to use AI. I’ve kept how anti-AI I am under wraps, but something happened recently that makes me think I need a go to line to explain my reluctance in a way that sounds reasonable even to someone who is pro-AI.

I applied for a new job and did not get it. In the interview, I was asked my opinion on AI and gave what I thought was a middle of the road answer, how, given my background (writing heavy liberal arts), I appreciated a human touch and the ability to maintain my skills and would not be using it in my own work. I also lied and added that I didn’t judge anyone else for using it. In hindsight, I think that answer was part of why I didn’t get the job.

So, given corporate feelings on AI, is there an answer I can give that makes clear that I won’t be using it, but won’t make me sound like an old fogey refusing to get with the times? I’m in my 20s, I’m too young to be telling people that “back in my day” A couple of years ago, people knew how to write for themselves!

—Not a Robot

Dear Not a Robot,

Here’s the thing about job interviews—you never really know why you didn’t get the job. Yes, it could have been your response about AI, but it also could have been a response to a question that you thought you nailed but which rubbed them the wrong way, or any one of a million other seemingly arbitrary things you did during the interview process that you didn’t even think twice about. I just want to make that clear before you go completely rethinking the way you talk about AI!

Now, if you still want to have a go-to line about AI in case it comes up, I think you can say something like, “I don’t use it in my own writing work, but I see how it could potentially be useful in other areas.” Preemptively saying that you don’t judge anyone else for using it sounds like you do judge others for using it (which, of course, you do!), so I would leave that out, especially if you are talking to someone in the more pro-AI camp.

I should also say that I personally have a more tentatively accepting view of some uses of AI. I too don’t use AI in my writing (obviously!), but I have, indeed, found it useful in some other areas of my life, particularly around things like coming up with, say, a plan to declutter my house or get better at tennis or help me figure out what to make for dinner with a list of random things I have in my pantry and fridge. I don’t use it every day, and in fact, sometimes I forget that it exists, but I have found it to be occasionally quite helpful. In fact, once when I was trying to figure out which plane tickets to buy, I asked an LLM which flight I should take and whether I should buy it with cash or points, and it opened its response with: “You’re overthinking this.” Sometimes you just need a robot to tell you to just buy the damn plane ticket.

—Doree

Classic Prudie

I remarried three years ago. We both have college-age children. My daughter Annie got involved with my stepson Jaime. My husband and I were deeply uncomfortable with this relationship, but were soundly told it was none of our business and they were adults. The relationship ended up going south in a spectacular display where Annie drunkenly accused Jaime of flirting with a mutual friend at a family party. Jaime broke up with her on the spot. I had hoped the bruised egos would heal, but Annie is holding a grudge nearly two years later.